


Bad Reputation

by Odyle



Category: Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: Kid Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-08
Updated: 2019-02-08
Packaged: 2019-10-24 05:37:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17698655
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Odyle/pseuds/Odyle
Summary: Chopper has some limitations as a babysitter.





	Bad Reputation

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ambiguously](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ambiguously/gifts).



At first, Hera brushed it off as babbling. Jacen was still very young and spent most of his time with Chopper.  That didn’t lend itself to a robust vocabulary, but Hera was not inclined to change up the arrangement. The care and attention he received from the crotchety old droid was unparalleled, and it gave her comfort to know that her son was in the care of a trusted friend while she found the powers that be. 

(At Chopper’s insistence, she’d drawn up a will. There wasn’t much to her name beyond the Ghost, but the droid insisted. She’d humored the droid and made it very explicit that custody of Jacen would go to him first.)

But the babbling continued. Hera heard it enough times that she started to question herself. Surely, she hadn’t heard him correctly.  _ It just sounds like it,  _ Hera reasoned. 

It wasn’t that she wasn’t glad to see her son when she returned home from missions, but she was always tired, often starving, and sometimes injured when she returned. Usually Chopper would keep him occupied while she cleaned up and ate, but one day she entered her quarters to find it in shambles, clothes and tools scattered about the main room as if a storm had clipped through. Chopper announced that Jacen had worn him down and wheeled himself off to plug into a wall to relax and recharge. 

Whatever ruckus had passed through seemed to have left Jacen untouched. He was still the smiling, happy baby he always was. So sweet and good natured. 

“I wonder what that was about,” Hera said, looking toward the closet where the droid had shut himself up. 

Her body was sore, but she picked him up and rocked him. Jacen was growing like a weed. It had become apparent early on that he’d taken after Kanan as far as height. 

He rested his head on her shoulder and reached up to place a hand on one of her lekku. 

Hera took him to the mess hall for dinner. She was starving, having not had anything to eat since leaving for the mission half a day before. The adrenaline rush of the mission always distracted her from hunger, but that need always came crashing back as she calmed down. 

It was off hours and there were only a few stragglers chatting over half-forgotten plates. 

Hera settled her son in a high chair with a cup and sat down to enjoy her own meal. It was nothing notable, but it was food. She was a few bites in when Jacen held his cup over the side of the high chair and dropped it. He giggled as it clattered on the ground. 

Hera picked up the cup and placed it back on Jacen’s tray. She was starting to have suspicions about what had happened in her quarters. 

He played with his food for a minute before taking up the cup again and flinging it to the floor. 

“Don’t do that,” Hera said. She leaned over, picked up the cup, and placed it back on Jacen’s tray.

“BeeEpBoo!” Jacen shrieked. 

It was unmistakably the word “kark,” only bleeped out in Binary rather than spoken in Basic. The resistance members seated around them looked up from their meals. Not everybody understood Binary, but enough did. 

“BeeeEpBoo!” he shouted again, his cheeks turning pinker. “BeeEpBoo!” 

“Where did you learn that word?” Hera hissed under her breath as she hurried to pull him from his high chair. 

“BeeEpBooBeeEpBoo!” Jacen shouted as Hera carried him, squirming in her arms, out of the mess, leaving her meal behind

 


End file.
